A Cinema for the Ears: Imagining the Audio-Cinematic through Podcasting

Dario Llinares

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    Podcasts have been described as “a cinema for the ears” and this application of a visual rhetoric to describe an audio-only experience results in an attempt to define what is still a relatively new medium. I argue that it is possible to consider something cinematic without the presence of moving images. Assertions in favour of the cinematic nature of podcasts often employ the visual imagination of listeners evoked by heightened audio characteristics that a particular podcast may possess. By focusing on film-centred podcasts specifically, which, in terms of content and form, are implicitly and often explicitly concerned with properties of the cinematic, I argue for a more conceptual analysis of the idea of a visual form of audio. While many film-oriented podcasts provide a supplementary celebration of cinema culture rather than manifesting a unique cinematic experience of their own, there are examples of film-centred podcasts that attempt to actualise what I will call an “audio-cinematic” experience, deploying the creative potential of the podcast to manifest an experiential aura that evokes a cinematic imagination. I analyse the sonic dimensions of audio-cinematic podcasts including my work with Neil Fox on The Cinematologists Podcast
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)341-365
    Number of pages25
    JournalFilm-Philosophy
    Volume24
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 30 Nov 2020

    Bibliographical note

    © Dario Llinares. This article is published as Open Access under the terms
    of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial Licence
    (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits
    non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the original work is
    cited. For commercial re-use, please refer to our website at: www.euppublishing.
    com/customer-services/authors/permissions.
    www.euppublishing.com/film

    Keywords

    • Podcasting
    • Cinema
    • Sound Studies
    • Digital Culture
    • Sound Design
    • Phenomenology
    • Audio-cinematic
    • Imagination
    • Podcasts
    • Speech
    • Sound

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